Saturday, 28 May 2016

So
my editor Aaron hits me up with this offer to live review and talk to Magrudergrind,
the now Brooklyn based Power violence trio,
about their newest album, ii, out
now on Relapse
Records. Naturally I jumped at the opportunity having remembered the
sonic force of their live set from the 2013 Decibel tour with Immolation,
Napalm Death,
and Cannibal
Corpse.

The
band, however, had since undergone a line up change, released a new album
following their hiatus, and one result was that there was an unrivaled energy
surrounding this show. So I drove to Richmond.
Arriving at the venue, a renovated old fire house, I sought to find RJ, the
individual that I had exchanged very brief words with in 2013. Once I was able
to track him down and get the interview out of the way I made a quick stop for
lunch-dinner, Jamaican chow, and wandered amid the small but growing crowd for
the opening sets.

Ramming
Speed brought
every bit of the intensity that you know them for, a non stop ride start to
finish. Really rad dudes too. They had run out of tapes so I snagged some
spiffy fresh shades. Yautja, I discovered, is a force that I simply
could not have prepared myself for. In a set spanning about an hour, they held
every moment of my attention. The perfectly executed riffs, the arrangement of
dynamic within their songs, the raw power that exuded from them as they played.
I made absolute sure to snag a tape from them before I hit the road again for
the night. That tape has been on repeat in my car’s deck since the show.

Finally,
around the break of the 22nd hour, 10:00 pm, Magrudergrind took the stage.
The energy in the crowd was insurmountable. The only other time I have seen
that much excitement for a set was the first tour that Godspeed You! Black Emperor had
after their 6 year hiatus. Final checks done and Magrudergrind starts. I gave up
on taking photos of the set because the energy was simply too great not to feed
on and feed into. With this kind of music you aren’t going to watch and listen
to a band, you’re going to become part of the show, to be part of that energy.
I found myself head banging slowly, quickly, that one kind of head bang that
you can totally do really fast but can only do it for a like a little bit cause
then you get really rattled and tired….all of it.

Luckily,
friend and photographer Craig Zirpolo was there to get some great shots of all
of the action. To bear witness to the live presence of Magrudergrind was a catharsis,
just as it was in 2013. Halfway through, Avi asks how many folks were seeing
them for the first time. It seemed that at least half of the hands in the crowd
went up. There has been so much passion and support generated from fans behind Magrudergrind,
and I saw it come out, all at once on 4/20 in Richmond. There were a few
shouted requests from the crowd, most notably, “BRIDGE BURNER!!!” to
which Avi looks at RJ and Casey and said, “not even three songs in…” It would
seem that they get that request a lot. Playing a decent mix of old and new,
absolutely nobody was let down. I got kicked in the face a few times by crowd
surfers and stage divers but it just made the show that much better. Magrudergrind
are a band that is best appreciated live at very high volumes, celebrated with
friends that are chaotically running around and into everyone and everything in
their path. This is "get to know your neighbor" pit
music.

Support
your scene, Support the artists, Support the music, you’re a tool if you don’t
make this tour, spend all of your dirty capitalism dollars on shits and tapes
from these guys. Then at least your friends will think you’re cool. Seriously
though, this is not a tour to miss.

Sludgelord)
So what’s the direction of Magrudergrind
right now? When I saw you guys a while ago you were kind of doing a different
thing, I know there was a [band] and location change up…

RJ) Oh yeah, we
all at one point lived in DC or right around there, Avi, our singer, moved to
New York…about a couple of years back, I did the same thing about four years
ago.

Sludgelord)
where are you these days?

RJ) We both live
in Brooklyn…all three of us live in Brooklyn actually…and then our drummer was
still in DC and, you know, the distance was a little too much to do, and I
don’t think he really wanted to be doing this kind of thing anymore so…he has
other bands, so…Casey joined about two years ago and other than that there’s
not really a new direction, keep writing the same songs.

Sludgelord) I
listened to “ii” a few times through before the differences really clicked with
me. I noticed that there weren’t samples, there seemed to be more of an
emphasis on “hardcore”, forgive the overly generic label, it seems like the DIY
feeling is still very much there, is there any real intention…like, is there
emphasis from within, focused on any one thing more than another or is this
just kind of what the group as of now is producing?

RJ) It’s kind of
circumstantial. I feel like we’ve been writing the same handful of songs for a
long time, for better or worse, I can hear it myself, the record sounds
different, the recording is completely different even though it’s the same guy…

Sludgelord)
It’s got a polarized opinion…

RJ) yeah, it’s
not as noisy, I mean yeah, there’s a lot of shit that’s different about it,
but, to me, I think that people will focus a little bit more than is necessary
on like kind of the surface level aspects, and then I think, the songs, the
core song writing, is pretty similar. The samples, it’s just, you know, frankly
we weren’t able to do that this time.

Sludgelord) I
like them [samples], don’t get me wrong, but with “ii” I’m not missing them in
your music. It seems like there are a lot of grind kind of bands that are slowing
down lately. Pig Destroyer slowed down with “Mass
and Volume”, Agoraphobic Nosebleed slowed
way down for “Arc”, you guys came out with “ii” recently, and it just seems
like the whole grind/sludge kind of stuff has just slowed down. Are you in
favor of that?

RJ) Yeah.
Perhaps…I mean...

Sludgelord) I
mean you recently toured with Primitive Man,
right? How was that?

RJ) It was
great! We’ve made a habit out of touring with slow bands frequently; we all
listen to that kind of music for the most part…

Sludgelord) Fister?

RL) yeah! Fuck
yeah, dude! You know, it’s something that we all enjoy, so you bring a couple
of friends of that into the fast stuff…

Sludgelord)
Mix it up, get a little dichotomy going?

RJ) Yeah, I mean
if it’s fast all the time…I mean, we’re not a dynamic band to begin with, and
you lose any of that dynamic if you only have fast parts.

Sludgelord)
How do you feel about John Cooke’s band, Corrupt
Moral Altar?

RJ) Oh they’re
great! We just got off tour with them.

Sludgelord)
How was it working with Kurt Ballou at God City again?

RJ) It’s great.
We go back to him cause he’s a good engineer, he gets good takes out of bands,
he gets good sounds…you know, we intentionally kind of did different things
with the guitars, we didn’t really have an end point, as far as like, to work
backwards from…

Sludgelord)
what are you playing with now?

RJ) Right now?
Tonight I’m using a new set up, this is the first tour I’m going on with it,
but it’s basically, it’s pretty simple shit, it’s like a really old mesa 200 watt
all tube head for the guitar channel and then I also split off a bass signal,
it’s like an SWR.

Sludgelord)
Guitar?

RJ) I’ve always
played SGs.
I played Fernandez
for a while but I only really ever felt comfortable playing an SG.
Been playing the same guitar since I was pretty much fifteen.

Sludgelord)
So to wrap it up, you’re confident in the direction, you like what you do, it’s
about the music, all that jazz?

RJ) I wouldn’t
really be here if we weren’t…the new album doesn’t really feel new cause we
recorded it like 18 months ago…We’re stoked on playing these songs, we’re gonna
try to put together a new record of some length this summer between tours…

Sludgelord)
cool and many thanks for taking the time to chat about the current going ons
with Magrudergrind! I can’t wait for the set!

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